Thursday, August 18, 2016

Australia ~ Day 13

Day 13 we packed up in the morning or our 4 hour drive back down to Townsville.  We decided we wanted to try and drive back down to Sydney to see everything along the Eastern coast.  At this point in time it was really going to work like that, however, life changes all the time.

After driving a while we stopped and got gas and something to eat.  Mom got a fresh fruit salad while I got a yummy veggie salad (with some ham).  The salad was really good, both of them were.



On the drive we really took our time and stopped whenever we wanted to.  Mainly when Mom would yell "STOP" but hey, that's what made it that much more fun :)

We turned at a waterfall sign and just drove down this road for what seemed like ever, to find a waterfall.  I'm glad we did.  This camping site is amazing and if we would have had the time (or lived in this area) we would be here all the time.




They even had restrooms that weren't too terrible.  However.....they did have these on their walls.  I wonder why they'd need this at a campground.



Murray Falls turned out to be super pretty!  You aren't supposed to swim near the falls, although looking at pictures online a ton of people do.  We didn't go off the trail so we were good.  I do totally get how being down in the water by the waterfall would be so amazing though!  See for yourself.....



     


     

After checking out the waterfall we went down to the lower part of the falls.  This is the area where you could swim and enjoy the water.  It seemed like really nice wading spots and I know my kids would have been in that water so fast!

     

Our cute little car :)



On the way back we saw that this area of the river was covering a road.  I'm sure you have to have a snorkel on your car to get through this and since we didn't, and I'm a scardy puss, we didn't even try.  But we did get out and take pictures :)

     



This house was super cute!  Not like fancy and expensive cute but look at all the hand prints on the side of the house.  I'd totally let my crazy kids do that to my house too if we lived out there.  I bet there are a lot of memories in those little prints.



The truck with a snorkel.....



Our first yucky moment of the whole trip.....It rained quite hard for a good 30 minutes or so.  The whole time we sat and ate sandwiches and drank coffee and tea.  I had the chicken grilled cheese and mom had a ham and cheese.  Her teapot was the cutest thing ever!  The pot sat on top of the cup so it looked like a large teapot.  SO CUTE!!!!!







After the rain stopped we went walking a beach again.  This time it was in hopes to find a salt water crocodile.  (we still hadn't found one at this point)  There were two dogs running the beach and playing in the water.  They of course made friends with mom.  Maybe they knew she was the mail lady and loved to give dogs treats LOL







Beach Calophyllum.......Ball Tree......I'm glad they had this sign put of for this tree.  It was really cool and of course I'd never seen one before so I wanted to know what it was and a little more about it.  Totally made sense they call it a Ball Tree.....

     

     

Since Mom was the passenger the WHOLE trip she took pictures of many of the signs while I was driving.  Here are just a few of those photos for Day 13.






Of course while we were driving, Mom again decided we should find waterfall number 2.  So we turned and saw some cool things.  I got to drive through my own river of water......It was a bit scary because I've never driven through water before but hey, how hard could it be LOL  Because we knew it was stormy still we just drove through the water and decided to turn around.  If it rained a lot we wouldn't be able to make it back through this area.  So we just drove through the water a few times to get pictures and videos, it was a really good laugh the whole time.




After making it back to Townsville we decided that we wanted to head back to Sydney that next morning.  Why did we do it this way?  Well, it took us ALL DAY to just drive 4 hours.  There's no way we could have made the 28 hour drive in 3 days with stopping to see everything along the way.  We did have a lot more to do in Sydney that we hadn't gotten the chance to do yet so taking our time and me driving was coming to an end.  We did go to store one last time and out to Mexican for dinner.  I even got mom to have an alcoholic drink with me :)

This one is for you Dad!  The price of a right
side drive truck, and it's a 4 door!!





Man how I am going to miss this part of Australia.  If you ever EVER get the chance to go to Australia......I advise you to go to the Townsville, Atherton, Cairns regions.  Yes, Sydney has so much to offer but Northern Queensland is such a stress free, slow paced, absolutely amazing place to be.

~Till Next Time~

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